Most faiths unfamiliar to Protestant clergy

Catholicism and Judaism most familiar

Sep 21, 2004

Most Protestant ministers in a recent survey have expressed little familiarity with the key beliefs of a number of non-Protestant religious groups. The faith perspectives most likely to be “extremely familiar” to Protestant clergy were Catholicism (41 percent), Judaism (33 percent), Mormonism (21 percent), Jehovah’s Witnesses (21 percent) and Islam (21 percent).

The findings by Ellison Research, a marketing research company in Phoenix, were first reported in the September/October edition of Facts & Trends, a magazine published by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. The survey was based on a sample of 700 Protestant ministers in 50 states and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.